Crybaby Falls

by Paula Graves

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.” She turned to look at him, just a quick, vibrant gaze that sent a jolt of desire hurtling through his body. “How would you like to be my date to a charity hoedown?”

  * * *

  ON SATURDAY EVENING as she and Cain entered the Purgatory Community Center meeting hall, Sara discovered how seriously her mother and Rita Ellis had taken the charity fund-raiser’s hoedown theme to heart. Normally, the community-center event hall was a bland, rectangular room with a dais at the back and two double doors at the front. Tonight, however, Ann Dunkirk, Rita Ellis and their little worker elves had transformed the place into the inside of a barn.

  Bales of hay covered with colorful horse blankets lined the walls in the place of chairs, and the dais at the back, where the Meade family bluegrass band was tuning up for their first set, was adorned with stable doors, hitching posts and a variety of ropes and authentic leather tack.

  “Yippie ki-yay,” Cain murmured in her ear.

  She shot him a warning glance. “It’s a bit much, but my mother was part of it, so watch your mouth.”

  His only reply was a twitch of his lips.

  She’d been finding it hard to drag her gaze away from him ever since he drove up to the cabin to pick her up for the dance. He looked downright edible tonight, in his Wrangler jeans, plaid shirt and leather jacket. He’d even worn a well-used John Deere cap that he’d folded and tucked into his back pocket when they entered the meeting hall.

  He made redneck look pretty damned sexy.

  And maybe if his good looks had been the end of it, she might have found him easier to resist. But he also possessed a solid core of decency he seemed so determined to hide from the world. In her work as a detective, she’d learned that a man’s true self always found a way to peek through even the most well-crafted facade. All you had to do was wait for it to make an appearance.

  Cain had shown his true self during lunch that day at Tabbouleh Garden, when he’d managed to make her feel wildly desirable at the same time he’d turned down her veiled invitation for no-strings sex.

  You’re a woman who should always have expectations, he’d told her.

  If she thought she’d found him desirable before...

  Forcing her gaze away from his deliciously stubbled jaw, she spotted her mother talking to Nola Meade, a tall, rawboned woman in her early forties. Her strong, unadorned features were more handsome than pretty, her silver-streaked brown hair gleaming in the spotlights like warm honey. She held a mandolin tucked in the crook of her elbow like a baby and smiled as she spoke to Ann Dunkirk.

  “Those the Meades?” Cain asked, nodding toward the stage.

  “You’ve never heard them?”

  Cain’s mouth curved. “My tastes tend more toward Skynyrd and Marshall Tucker.”

  “Just promise you’re not going to pull out your lighter and start hollerin’ ‘Freebird.’” She weaved her way through the milling crowds, heading for the dais. She could tell by the sudden buzz in the crowd that Cain was right behind her.

  She should have warned her mother of her plans to bring Cain with her tonight, she realized when Ann’s eyes narrowed at their approach.

  Sara gave her mother a swift hug. “The place looks amazing.”

  “It’s too much,” Ann admitted, keeping her voice low. “Rita can be a bit exuberant.”

  “It’s very festive,” Sara insisted. She smiled up at Nola Meade. “Hey there, Nola. How’re you doing?”

  “Better’n I deserve, hon.” Her brown-eyed gaze slid past Sara to snag on Cain standing close behind her. Sara didn’t miss the spark of feminine appreciation in the other woman’s eyes and couldn’t blame her a bit.

  “Nola Meade, this is Cain Dennison. Cain, this is Nola Meade, the best mandolin player in the hills.”

  “Not sure I’d go that far,” Nola said with a broad smile. “Nice to meet you, Cain.”

  “Same here, Mrs. Meade.”

  “Oh, lord, just call me Nola, unless you want to make me feel old.” Nola looked at Sara. “I was real sorry to hear about your husband.”

  “Thank you. It’s been a tough few years.”

  As Nola made her excuses and turned back to the work of setting up the stage for the family band, Ann caught Sara’s arm and pulled her to one side of the stage, away from everyone else. She glanced toward Cain, who was waiting patiently by the stage, making a show of watching the Meades tune up their instruments.

  “Do you really think it was a good idea to bring Cain Dennison?”

  “He paid for his ticket like everyone else,” Sara said quietly.

  “Joyce still thinks he had something to do with Renee’s death.”

  “Donnie didn’t. He said that Cain was a good friend to Renee.”

  Ann glanced at Cain again. “Have you taken up with him?”

  “Taken up with him?” Sara asked, shooting her mother a look.

  Ann lowered her voice. “You know what I’m asking.”

  Sara sighed. “Cain and I both want to know what happened to Renee.”

  Ann’s dark eyes narrowed. “It’s not enough that your daddy’s come out of retirement with this terrible new case with the Burke girl—”

  “Mom, it’s what we do. You know that.”

  With a sigh, Ann slanted a look toward Cain again. “I think your date is trying to get your attention.”

  Sara turned and saw Cain watching her, his gaze urgent. She excused herself from her mother and crossed to where he stood. “What’s up?”

  “One of the coaches from the high school is here, and I overheard him telling his wife that Coach Allen had called in sick the past three days of school.”

  “Well, hell. I guess maybe that’s why he hasn’t returned any of my calls.” She’d tried several times since Wednesday morning to get in touch with Coach Allen, with no luck. Nor had Becky Allen returned any of her messages.

  “That probably means he won’t show up tonight.”

  She frowned with frustration. Talking to Jim Allen had been her main reason for coming to this fund-raiser. In a crowd like this, she’d figured, she would have ample opportunities to get her hands on a discarded cup or plate that might contain enough of the coach’s DNA to test against the profile of the baby Renee had been carrying at the time of her death.

  Cain caught her elbow in his hand, tugging her with him toward the side of the room. If he was aware of the stares and whispers that followed them, he showed no sign of it. Once they were tucked between a bale of hay and a decorative haystack near a window looking out on the parking lot, he said, “Wonder if he’s really sick?”

  “You think he’s faking it?”

  “He has to know you’re looking for him by now. You left enough messages.”

  “And he knows Donnie and I went to see him before the accident.”

  “Maybe he’s afraid you’ve remembered something.”

  “All I remembered is being outside his house the night of the accident.” Despite her attempts to recreate the relaxation techniques Lila Birdsong had used with her the other morning, Sara hadn’t been able to uncover any more of her lost memories. “And he doesn’t know I remember even that much.”

  Cain’s hand stroked lightly along her arm, sending prickles of delicious heat darting through her. “Maybe not. But between Ariel Burke’s murder and your sudden eagerness to talk to him—”

  She looked up at him. “You think he might have killed Ariel as well?”

  “I can’t ignore the similarities in the murders.” Cain lowered his voice to a near-whisper. “After we talked about Coach Allen the other day, I remembered something a guy told me back in high school. It was pure gossip, and I’ve learned not to spread gossip, since I was the focus of a lot of malicious lies in my own time.”

  “But?” she prodded when he paused as if he didn’t want to continue.

  “But back in high school, one of the guys in the crowd I hung with swore up and down that there was a coach at the school who wa
s sleeping around with some of the senior girls. What if it was true? And what if that coach was Jim Allen?”

  Chapter Eleven

  The start of the bluegrass set rolled through the hall almost as soon as Cain posed his question, enlivening the gathered crowd and raising the decibel level in the community-center hall so high that the only way Sara could have responded was with a yell.

  Shooting him an apologetic look, she caught his hand and pulled him closer to the stage, where she joined with the crowd in clapping to the beat of the lively reel the Meade family had chosen to begin their set.

  Next to her, Cain gave a shrug and started clapping along as well, his grin suggesting that, rock fan or not, he recognized the Meades could flat-out play. Nola’s long fingers danced over the mandolin strings, coaxing riffs as fierce as any rock guitarist could hope for, and her older daughter, Tammie Jane, was defying physics on the banjo.

  “They’re good!” Cain said in her ear as the Meades finished the first song to applause and started straight into the next. The two younger girls, Tammie Jane and her sister, Dorrie, put down their banjo and fiddle respectively, heading to a pair of microphones. The girls began to sing in crystalline harmony to an old-fashioned two-step, and all around Sara and Cain, the fund-raiser attendees began pairing up to dance.

  Sara turned to Cain and held out her hand. “Wanna dance?”

  “I’m not much of a dancer,” he warned as he caught her hand, pulling her flush to him. “But I’m up for a challenge.”

  Hiding a grin, Sara slipped her arm around his shoulders, settling her fingers in the silky waves of dark hair that brushed the collar of his denim jacket. He met her gaze, heat blazing in the depths of his gray eyes, and something at her core caught fire and started spreading until her whole body burned with excitement.

  She’d been gawky as a teenager in most situations, but the one thing she’d always been able to do was dance. It was as if the music took over her body, erasing her gracelessness for the length of the tune.

  Cain hadn’t been kidding—he wasn’t much of a dancer as they started, but he was a quick study, and he seemed to actually enjoy letting her subtly lead the dance, his gaze deepening each time her legs brushed his or their hips collided as she helped him through the steps that twirled them through the crowd.

  But eventually, he took control, tugging her closer as his steps became more certain. Her heart pounded a quickened cadence in response, and by the time the song ended, she was nearly out of breath.

  “You’re a better dancer than you think,” she said, trying to tell herself that it was the lively dance and not Cain’s arms around her that had stolen her breath and jump-started her pulse. But she knew better.

  It had been three years since she’d felt another heartbeat thud against her chest or fingers slide over her arm with sexual intent. And even though what she and Cain had just shared would seem, to others, nothing more than a lively two-step, she knew it was so much more.

  It was a question. An invitation. The same invitation she’d so delicately hinted at a few days earlier over lunch. She saw it in his dark eyes, felt it in the way his hand lingered as he released her and stepped back.

  What are we going to do about this thing between us? his eyes seemed to ask, and she didn’t know the answer any more now than then.

  All she knew was when the next song started, a plaintive ballad of love and longing, they reached for each other without question.

  He felt solid. Real. For three years, she’d slept with a phantom memory of the man she’d loved since boyhood, awakening to an empty bed and living on the precipice of an aching chasm between what she’d had and what she’d lost. She’d grieved and, in many ways, moved on with her life.

  But could she ever really love another man?

  She and Donnie had been inseparable from the tender age of thirteen and she’d never doubted her decision to be with him, even during the stresses and strains that challenged every long-term relationship. Was it even possible to find that kind of love again?

  Was she greedy to try?

  It was stupid to be thinking about love in Cain Dennison’s arms. They barely knew each other. What was stirring between their bodies had more to do with friction and hormones, not intimacy and affection.

  But it had been a while since she’d let friction and hormones have their way. And she’d already made it plain to him that she’d be okay if whatever happened between them never led anywhere else.

  She started to look up at him, to see if she could read what he was thinking in those gunmetal eyes, but before her gaze reached his face, it snagged on a pair of newcomers who had just entered the community center. A hard chill washed over her, driving out the earlier heat, and she stiffened in Cain’s embrace.

  He pulled back to look at her. “What?”

  As he started to turn his head to see what she was looking at, she tightened her grip on him. “Don’t turn around. Joyce and Gary Lindsey just came in.”

  His expression shifted subtly from curiosity to dismay. He dropped his hands away from her body. “I’ll go.”

  No, she thought, desperate to feel the heat again, anything but this disheartening blend of grief and shame. She grabbed his hand again and gave a tug. “There’s a side exit between the punch bowl and that big scarecrow.” Sara led him to the door and they slipped out into the darkness.

  With the door closed, the music faded to a soft whisper of sound. Cain stepped away from her, withdrawing his heat and, with it, any shelter against the cold night air. Autumn was fading in the mountains, and winter was on the way, slithering like a promise of ice down her spine.

  Sara wrapped her arms around herself and stared at him, not sure what to say or do now that she had him all to herself. What came out when she opened her mouth was a simple statement. “Winter’s coming.”

  He held her gaze a long moment, as if trying to read what was going on behind her eyes. Good luck, she thought with bleak amusement. Hell if I know myself.

  He reached out almost tentatively, as if he expected her to run at his first touch. When she didn’t flee, he ran his hands gently up and down her arms as if to warm her. “You can go back in there now, you know. I’ll go on home and Joyce doesn’t even have to know I was here.”

  No, she thought again. She didn’t know what she wanted to do, what was the right thing to do, but she knew she wasn’t ready to let him leave. She lifted her chin, the decision made. “You know small towns. It won’t take a minute before someone tells her all about it.”

  “I don’t want to make things harder for you. For either one of you.”

  Sara put her hand on his chest, flattening her palm over his heart. “I know.”

  He covered her hand briefly with his own, then started to step away, once more robbing her of his heat.

  She caught his hand as the music coming from inside the hall changed again, to a plaintive lament that seemed to resonate in her own hollow chest. “Don’t go.”

  “Sara—”

  “Dance with me again.”

  He gazed at her in consternation, and she could tell he knew as well as she did that what she was suggesting was akin to lighting matches in a pool of gasoline. He closed his eyes briefly, as if struggling to make the right decision. When he opened them again, the fierce hunger in his gaze shot straight to her sex, setting her nerves vibrating like a tuning fork.

  “You like to play with fire, don’t you, Sara Dunkirk?” he murmured, tugging her close.

  She melted into his embrace, letting the music work its magic on her normally graceless body. The tune was an old one, a mountain lover’s plaintive song of love given freely and ripped away, and it made her feel equal parts melancholy and restless.

  “This isn’t why we came here tonight,” he murmured, but he didn’t make any effort to end the seductive glide of his body against hers.

  “I know.”

  “You know how wrong I think this is,” he added, not sounding as if he thought it wron
g at all.

  “It’s a terrible idea,” she agreed in a tone that suggested she, too, thought no such thing.

  There was no reason to move from where they swayed under the weak golden light of the parking lot lamps, but before she realized it, they were swallowed by the shadows pooling near the cool brick wall of the community center. The music grew fainter, her pulse more thunderous in her ears as he pressed her into the wall. Though the bricks were cold and hard against her spine, all she felt was a fierce, shuddering thrill as he pinned her there with his long, lean body.

  “If you don’t want this, say so now,” he whispered, his mouth inches from hers. His breath fogged the air between them, softening his features as he gazed at her with feral intent.

  She curled her hand around the back of his neck and tugged him closer, lifting her face to him.

  The first brush of his mouth to hers was exploratory, almost tentative. But when she darted her tongue against his upper lip, he twined his fingers with hers, trapping her hands against the brick wall as he slid his tongue over hers, drawing out her passionate response until she was gasping for air and sanity.

  His mouth danced lightly across her jawline and over to her ear, nibbling lightly on the sensitive lobe before he whispered, “Let’s get out of here.” He released her hands and stepped back, leaving her feeling so boneless and weak she had to fight to keep from sliding down the wall into a puddle at his feet. Slowly, his gaze warm with sexy confidence, he held his hand out to her. “You coming?”

  As soon as humanly possible, she thought, unable to stop a grin from spreading over her features at the naughty thought as she took his hand.

  On trembling legs, she followed him across the parking lot to his truck.

  * * *

  WHAT THE HELL do you think you’re doing, Dennison? Even as his heart pounded a fierce cadence of desire, his foggy brain struggled to regain control over his senses. He was driving Sara Lindsey back to her little mountain cabin as fast as his truck could go, to hell with traffic laws or anything resembling good sense. When he got there, he fully intended to strip her naked and explore every inch of that tantalizing body that had teased him all night beneath the layers of cotton and denim that had hidden it from his view. He was damned well determined to give her the best sex of her life.